But two miles from The Hague lies Scheveningen—Holland’s most fashionable, most expensive, most diverting seaside resort—the Atlantic City of the Netherlands. It may be approached by divers means: by railway train, by electric car, by omnibus, or on foot. The two principal and most popular routes served by the electric cars from The Hague are the Old Way and the New. Both are tree shaded and attractive, but the more tree shaded and attractive is the Old Way. The clinkers with which the most of it is paved were put down as early as 1666. Lined on the left with handsome summer residences and on the right with a pretty park, the Old Way to Scheveningen, with its geometric rows of stately trees, is undoubtedly the finest avenue in Holland.
Scheveningen, besides being a watering place of many merits and numerous shortcomings, is a town of no mean importance as a fishing port. Its fleet numbers two hundred or more pinken, or small fishing boats, and their catch is sold at auction at the fishing harbor upon arrival, as at Ostend.
The name of the place is a hard one for the English-speaking tourist to pronounce, but he will not be far wrong if, in his apparent eagerness to get there, he inquires of the genial head porter at the hotel in The Hague the number of the car line that will take him to “Shave agin.” He may slur over a syllable or two in the abbreviation, but the head porter will make due allowance for at least a brave attempt to master the word—which is something—and will direct him accordingly.
Instead of the old familiar seaside board walk, Scheveningen has its stone paved Boulevard, a mile and a quarter long and eighty feet wide. This is the promenade of the international hodgepodge of holiday makers, augmented on a Sunday and in the evenings by giggling girls and sober countenanced fishermen from the village. Invariably dressed in their best Sunday-go-to-meetings, the most conspicuous feature of the feminine attire is a wide shawl, often suggesting the Persian in design, worn tight about the shoulders and reaching down to the waist in the back. Of course the skirts are padded voluminously about the hips, and the girls display at the temples many varieties of gilded antennæ to hold their white caps securely.
About midway of the Boulevard and back of it, stands the ever present Kurhaus, although what they profess to cure in that house may simply be a reluctance on the part of the holder to diminish his letter of credit. It is three hundred feet or more in length, this Kurhaus, and its commodious hall, in which are held some very excellent symphony orchestra concerts, can seat as many as 3,000 people. On the side of the Kurhaus overlooking the sea there is a large stone terrace where the band plays in the afternoons, and, underneath this, a very expensive café.
Just opposite the Kurhaus is the pier—a real old-fashioned ocean going steel pier, terminating in a concert pavilion and built right out into the water for almost a quarter of a mile, having a plate glass partition down the middle, so that there is a lee and a weather side to it. At intervals along its sides are fish nets, which may be raised from or lowered into the water by means of a crank and spindle attached to the pier railing. These are rented to the public on the time basis, and there is ever a group of persistent people vibrating between one net and another in the hope that its operator may bring to the rail a real denizen of the watery depths. I contracted the fever one day myself and fell in with this flitting crowd for an hour, more or less, only to be unrewarded in the end, but I am told that if anything piscatorially larger than an adult white-bait inadvertently becomes enmeshed in any of the nets and is brought to the surface the successful fisher receives round after round of enthusiastic applause.
And Scheveningen is in no sense of the word a philanthropic institution. Everything in the place has its price mark tagged securely on. You have to pay to walk on the pier, concert or no concert; you have to pay to listen to the band from the Kurhaus terrace; you have to pay to sit in one of the yellow mushroom chairs that make the beach resemble a fungus growth; you have to pay even to take a bath in the ocean, and are then restricted to the hours of from seven in the morning until sunset. On Sundays they close up the ocean for bathing purposes at 2 p.m.
